A
leaked discussion reveals the difficult problem of training AI to
detect and define slurs

A
private chat thread released this weekend reveals that banning hate
speech on Reddit is apparently too difficult a job to even attempt.

The
news,first
spotted by theHuffington
Post, comes from a leaked conversation between Reddit
CEO Steve Huffman and Reddit user Zachary Swanson, known as
“whatllmyusernamebe” on the site. Swanson asked Huffman to
reconsider his permissive stance on hate speech on the site,
pointing out thatReddit’s
rules already ban “violent” speech, which the site defines as
“content that encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence
or physical harm against an individual or a group of people.”

“THERE’S
A REASON WHY IT’S NOT REALLY DONE.”

In
response, Huffman argued that hate speech is “difficult to define,”
adding that enforcing a total ban on hate speech is “a nearly
impossible precedent to uphold,” and “impossible to enforce
consistently.” After speaking with Huffman, Swanson posted
screenshots of his conversation in a pair of subreddits, includingr/stopadvertising,
which is dedicated to curbing hate speech on the site. After he did,
Swanson received an email saying he was suspended from the site for
a week on charges of harassment.

This
isn’t the first time Huffman has found himself in hot water over his
stance on hate speech.Back
in April, Huffman found himself embroiled in controversy for
refusing to moderate any of the blatant racism happening on his
site. At the time, he said that Reddit’s stance on speech is to
“separate behavior from beliefs,” and that hate speech did not
constitute a “behavior”. Users were specifically asking Huffman
about this in relation to r/The_Donald, the subreddit dedicated to
the US president that has often come under fire for housing racist
or bigoted discussions.

Huffmanlater
clarifiedthat he felt racism was not
“welcome” on Reddit, but that he believed “the best defense against
racism and other repugnant views both on Reddit and in the world, is
instead of trying to control what people can and cannot say through
rules, is to repudiate these views in a free conversation.”

HATE
SPEECH IS TRICKY TO CATCH WITHOUT HUMAN EYES

AstheHuffington
Postpoints out, there are social
media sites that attempt to moderate for hate speech, includingFacebook,Instagram,
andTwitter.
The issue is that these efforts typically take human effort. Right
now, Facebook works with scores of people — mostly contractors
overseas — to oversee content, review flagged material, and decide
when something has violated its rules. They’re the ones that inspect
user posts to decide what does and doesn’t constitute hate speech.
It’s an expensive problem to have, and exactly why the company is
currentlybuying
and developing softwarethat specializes in
natural language processing to handle this problem with artificial
intelligence. Ultimately, the goal is to have an AI that can
understand language and intent, which are both crucial to deciding
how hateful or benign a certain post might be.

Reddit
might not have these algorithms, but the company has decided to
police hate speech in the past once it crosses a nebulous line and
typically involves a fair amount of public pressure. After months of
criticism in 2015, the siteshut
down a handful of overtly racist subreddit communities, with
Huffmanclaimingthat
they “violate the spirit of the policy by making Reddit worse for
everyone else.” Two months earlier, Huffman had shut down popular
homophobic, transphobic, and fat shaming subreddits on similar
grounds.